A DANCER has taken a beauty contest by storm as the first transgender contestant to make it to the finals.

Pammy Rose - born Paul Witten - beat off 500 hopefuls to join the final 11 contestants in the Sunderland Echo’s Face of 2013 Competition.

The 20-year-old from Seaham, County Durham, said: “I want to stand up and speak out so hopefully people like me can stop hiding who they are, stop being afraid and just be happy and feel accepted.

“I’m in a good place at the minute, but it hasn’t always been like that.”

He mother Julie Olds said: “Pammy was so girly. I have an older daughter, Kayleigh, and she was more of a tom boy than her brother.

“Pammy hated getting dirty, she didn’t like football and by the age of three Pam was wearing high heels and playing with her sister’s toys.

“So I always knew something was different, but if I’m honest, I just thought Pam would be gay.”

Pammy said she is a woman trapped in a man’s body.

After seeing psychiatrists and doctors, taking hormones and proving she wants to live as a woman, she has been told she can physically change sex from September.

She said: “It’s all I want.

“People think it’s a choice but it’s not. I have no choice and I never have.

“I didn’t want to be like this, I didn’t want to be miserable, laughed at and bullied but it’s who I am and once I have had the operation I think it will be a relief.”